In 1993 the five authors of Emmaus all found themselves living and working within the Diocese of Wakefield. Stephen Cottrell had just moved to the diocese as Missioner. John Finney had recently become suffragan Bishop of Pontefract, having been the Church of England's national evangelism officer. Robert Warren had recently left St Thomas's Crookes to take on John's former role and was living in the Wakefield area. Felicity Lawson had been Dean of Ministry in the diocese for some time and Steven Croft had been vicar of Ovenden in Halifax for six years.
All five authors had previously been involved in helping churches to undertake the work of evangelism and nurture through their own experience and through developing published material. John called the group together to explore the possibility of developing something that would be of use throughout the diocese. Fairly soon it became clear that what was being developed could be of even wider use and we began to form a partnership with Church House Publishing and the Bible Society.
From our very first meeting, the Emmaus Road story played an important part in our thinking. All of us were attracted to the picture of Jesus on the first Easter Day drawing alongside the two disciples who are walking in the wrong direction. The Emmaus Road story helped us to 'see' the important stages in the Emmaus material - contact, nurture and growth - and to give us a model for those who are accompanying others on the journey to faith.
From the very beginning, we aimed to write material that could be used by Christians from many different traditions, both within the Church of England and outside it. We also set out to write an enabling resource, which could be adapted, changed and developed further by different churches and which would be flexible enough to suit many different situations. We wanted to combine the most effective educational and evangelistic methods with creative, orthodox theological thinking about Christian faith and mission. All of the material was written and thoroughly tested in West Yorkshire, much of it in non-book cultures. We listened carefully to the feedback we received and incorporated changes into the revised material.
The first six Emmaus books were published in 1996 with the final two books in the main series (Leading an Emmaus Group and Your Kingdom Come) following in 1998. The main Emmaus series represents five years of collaborative writing by the five authors. The Nurture course had been in development at Ovenden since 1987 and had already been used and tested by several hundred churches in a former version called 'Christians for Life' before being extensively revised for Emmaus.
Since Emmaus was first published, we have been amazed, humbled and very, very thankful to see for ourselves and to hear stories of how Emmaus is being used in many different places in the British Isles and, over the last couple of years, throughout the world. We ourselves, together with the consultants who work with us, regularly lead training sessions in different places and are always pleased to receive invitations. The authors continue to meet with the publishers to review how things are going.
This web site was first developed and the Emmaus Introduction published in a second edition in 2000; a new series of Emmaus Bible Resources was launched in November 2001. The web site was revised in 2002. In 2003, we saw the publication of Youth Emmaus and the revised second editions of Nurture, Contact and Christian Lifestyle (with a fresh new design).
2004 saw further revised second editions, of Leading an Emmaus Group and Growing as a Christian. We have also invested in developing the web site, offering more information about Emmaus and resources to equip Emmaus group leaders.
Steven Croft
